Miami Marlins Will Have to Talk to a Local Boat Salesman if They Want Miamimarlins.com

​Deep in the sweatiest bowels of Sun Life Stadium, one of Jeffrey Loria's minions is ticking off a to-do list for next season, when his ball club will be rechristened the Miami Marlins and move into a gleaming, fresh Little Havana home.

Somewhere just off the coast of Miami, Guido Blanco laughs. The native Miamian, boat salesman, and avid fisherman has owned miamimarlins.com for 14 years -- and he's not itching to give it up for the local baseball team.

"I don't really follow baseball, to be honest," Blanco says. "I'm from Miami. This is a football town."

Blanco bought the domain name for a couple dozen bucks in 1997 with vague plans to start a charter-fishing venture. The idea never took off, but he kept ownership of the site. That means the Marlins can't claim he's a "cybersquatter" and try to boot him.

"To file a suit, you have to show someone is using the name in bad faith," says David Roy Ellis, a St. Petersburg-area lawyer who has won several high-profile domain-name fights. "But using that name for a fishing company makes just as much sense as using it for a baseball team."

Indeed, the Marlins say they won't try to wrest the site from Blanco. "There are no plans for future acquisitions," says Matthew Gould, a spokesman for MLB.com, adding that marlins.com will remain the main web address for the newly renamed club.

So maybe Blanco will finally get that charter up and running. Just don't expect to see him at the new Marlins stadium. "I didn't know they were changing their name," he says.

Tim Elfrink is an award-winning investigative reporter, the managing editor of the Miami New Times and the co-author of "Blood Sport: Alex Rodriguez and the Quest to End Baseball's Steroid Era." Since 2008, he's written in-depth pieces on police corruption, fatal shootings and social justice issues across South Florida. He's won the George Polk Award and has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.